burns like a thousand stars
by The Scarlett Ribbon
Summary: theirs is a story that hasn't finished yet. Sasuke, Sakura and life during the war. written for ssmonth 2012
1. conversation

**title: burns like a thousand stars**

**author: The Scarlett Ribbon**

**summary: theirs is a story that hasn't finished yet. Sasuke, Sakura and life during the war.**

**rating: K**

**prompt: conversation**

* * *

_burns like a thousand stars_

* * *

Sunset blood orange, heart stops – and silence.

It's eerie, almost. The quiet. She doesn't have time to process it because that silhouette in the trees, oh, Sakura would know it anywhere and even though the last two days have been nothing but mud and blood and death screaming in her ears, it's not enough to stop that old, badly patched fault line from cracking open and ripping her heart to shreds.

All her bones tremble, feet halting. Her heart is in her throat and on her sleeves, ready and waiting. Already the phantom press of his hand reaching out to crush it between his fingers makes the world spin, just for a moment.

And Sakura laughs, sharp and bitter – almost a sob, rising in her chest. All this, and he hasn't even looked up yet. And for the first time, there is a part of her that really doesn't want him to; a part of her that is small, and mean, and still dreams of his cartwheeling corpse eyes, blood-red mania spinning into her nightmares.

Sasuke takes one more footstep before the wheels of the Sharingan slide up and over to where she stands between the trees, and she cannot move, cannot look away –

"…Sakura."

She can't stop her eyes from drinking him in hungrily, because Sakura – Sakura is a glutton for punishment and despite the part of her that wants to run, run and never look back, she cannot drown her most masochistic tendencies and the hope that somewhere under the skin, there remains some semblance of the boy she knew in his skeleton of bleached white bones.

"What happened?" she demands, and he looks down at himself, at the blood that covers his front like a crimson bib. His sword, that thin blade she's watched him charge with the chirping of a thousand birds, is still dripping.

"I killed Kabuto," he says levelly, and she realises that's not the answer she wants.

What she really wants to do is scream at him; scream and cry until there is nothing left, and no more tears to shed. _How could you do this? How could you do this to me, Sasuke-kun? _

She focuses on the splash of blood against his pale, sickly skin because she cannot bear to look him in the face to see what expression lies there. His stoic expression used to cut her open, but now she wonders if seeing that hate-induced mania distort the features of the boy she loves for a second time would be worse.

"What are you doing here, Sakura?" he asks, and if there is rage barely supressed in the sound of his voice, there is just the tiniest trace of curiosity too.

_Please, please, let there be curiosity, _she prays. _Please. Anything other than hate. _

"No," her voice is shaking, "I mean, _what happened?_ What happened to you, Sasuke?"

She thinks of the injured shinobi and his love letter, that moment that changed all her perceptions, made her remember what she should never have forgotten.

"_He must be a really great guy, if _you're _in love with him!_"

"What, no assassination attempts?" Sasuke asks, and it stings, god – it's like a punch to the chest, and it makes no sense given what he's done, but somehow she knows the real traitor here is her.

She takes a breath, and another; tries to hold back the crescendo crashing in her chest.

"Tell me there's a reason," she begs, because this is the crux of it, the thing that matters. "Tell me you're not the villain everyone tells me you are. Tell me you haven't just gone off the deep end because all the darkness you sought turned around and poisoned you."

She can't read him, not anymore, not like she used to. There was a time when Sakura could look into his eyes and see the whole of him, everything there was.

"After all that, they didn't tell you?" his voice is a tired drawl.

Numbly, she shakes her head. Naruto needs her, she knows, but Sakura still loves Sasuke to the depth and breadth of all the oceans she's never seen, and walking away without an answer is impossible. Turning her back on him is impossible.

"Please," the word is whispered, but Sasuke is too sharp of hearing to miss it. "Tell me what happened to make you like this. Help me to understand."

He stares at her for far too long in silence. "I don't have to tell you anything," he says slowly, and then, almost an accusation, "You didn't care about answers _before._"

Her thoughts spin in frantic circles, because she's not sure how to make him understand the circumstances that led her to a bridge with the intention to kill without making excuses. That is one thing that he could never abide.

"I know," she admits, licking her chapped lips, mouth uncomfortably dry. "But you joined _Akatsuki, _Sasuke. What was I supposed to think?"

When he doesn't reply, Sakura continues. "I spent three years telling myself that – that you were still my friend, that you were still _you_, but I hadn't talked to you in so long…I had to start reading you by your actions, because that was all I had to go on, and Sasuke…You started acting like a villain."

_And I still don't know why. _

The effect of that last word is immediate and rather frightening. Sasuke is stalking towards her, hand raising that thin blade and Sharingan flashing before she knows what is happening. He is shouting at her, his every word punctuated with rage. Sakura doesn't retreat and he towers over her, sword mere millimetres from slicing her open.

"_I am not the villain here!" _he screams at her. "Look at your precious Konoha – you ask the Hokage what they did to my clan!"

But he doesn't do it, and that alone is enough to make her cling to the fragile threads of hope she's been nursing for weeks. His eyes are red and hypnotising and she doesn't look away.

"I'm not asking them," she murmurs, because this is what it comes down to in the end. She's made enough mistakes to see things clearly, and despite everything he has and hasn't done, Sakura remembers who Sasuke is, and she is determined to have this conversation. "I'm asking you."

Because Sasuke is not a monster, and only something very terrible could have driven him to the edge of madness.

She can tell by the way he stills that he understands. His hand loosens its grip on the sword he carries, and as the fury in his face ebbs away, Sakura cannot help but think he looks tired in ways that she hopes she will never know. Without it, his face is stripped down and oddly vulnerable; Sasuke looks more like himself in that moment, than he has in years.

With the small space between them lit with the colour if a distant, smouldering sunset, Sasuke tells her the real story of the Uchiha massacre.


	2. hostage

**title: burns like a thousand stars**

**author: The Scarlett Ribbon**

**summary: : theirs is a story that hasn't finished yet. Sasuke, Sakura and life during the war.**

**rating: K**

**prompt: hostage**

* * *

_burns like a thousand stars_

* * *

He makes it halfway to the small, mountainous hideout where Konoha's Elders are before the guilt gets the better of him. Darkness has settled on the world like a blanket, thick and impenetrable. He's long left that woody grove behind, along with the girl who used to love him, and somehow, after everything that's passed between them, it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Kusanagi rests against his shoulder blade and the weight is a comforting familiarity, something to focus on, when the world feels like its spinning in frantic circles around his head, too fast and furious for him to follow.

Sasuke should be thinking about the last two Elders whom he is about to kill – whom he has tracked down based on information his former teammate has freely given him, for reasons he cannot fathom. He should not be thinking about Sakura.

"_I know where they are,"_ she'd said, watching him with eyes that were fierce and green and _angry. _The tear tracks were still drying on her face when she betrayed her village for him, told him where to find the last two culprits in his Clan's brutal murder.

Their deaths will be sweeter than all the snacks he never liked – though Itachi loved dango, he remembers. He's wanted this, craved this, since the bandages covered his eyes as he came down from that glorious high after killing Danzou.

Far in the distance, he makes out two tiny lights against the black night sky. Their deaths are so close he can almost taste it and he doesn't understand why she gave him this information after everything he's done.

They both tried to kill each other, last time they met. The kunai in her hand felt like yet another betrayal, but with the memory of Itachi's cracked corpse face stuck behind his eyelids, stuck in that moment of dissolving, he wonders if this is her way of trying to put that right. It takes the sting of that encounter away, he acknowledges, not quite ready to admit that his steel resolve – his unshakable conviction in the culpability of the village as a whole – is already crumbling.

"_If I tell you where to find them, will that be enough for you? When they're dead, will you finally stop, Sasuke?" _

"_I don't know." _

She told him anyway. He thinks that maybe now she knows the truth, she really does understand. Again. There was a time when he felt she could look right through him and see the things he kept locked away, growing twisted away from the sunlight. He told her too much, back then. Told her things no one else knew, and she hugged his secrets to her chest without letting the rest of the world know.

"_Show me where they are, Sakura."_

"…_I can't. Naruto's fighting right now and there's no time. I'm sorry."_

She's going to get herself killed, he knows it. Teeth gritted, he stops in his tracks and tries to breathe. The smell of damp earth rises to meet him, and even now, so many years after his desertion, he misses the fragrant air of home; summer and flowers and ramen.

Sasuke is so tired. The cavity in his chest where he carries murder is already withering around the edges, and that there is the answer to Sakura's question.

The Elders are so _close. _A few more miles, maybe, and he can lay his ghosts to rest. Just one foot forward, and then another, and he can finally stop.

"_I have to help him. I have to be there…"_ It might be his imagination, but he likes to think that she was torn, making that decision. That it wasn't so easy for her to choose Naruto, the golden boy, the _hero, _over him. She couldn't kill him before, could she? And she looked to him for the truth, sought answers she could have got elsewhere from him.

Sakura is trusting. Sakura is kind. Sakura gives her love freely and without fear. She almost died for him once, when she had not even half the strength and power that she has now.

Sasuke stares forward, glowering at the lights on the horizon. It's an invitation, a mocking call to arms. His hands clench into angry fists, because all he can see is the retreating shape of Sakura's back as she darted away between the trees, before being swallowed up by dark shadows. She is small and brave and Tobi will use her, he is sure.

Tobi will manoeuvre things into a trap where she becomes the bait that gets Naruto killed. Tobi will thrash Naruto into the ground, where Sakura will kill herself trying to save him from the clutches of death.

And knowing this undeniable truth, deep down in his bones, Sasuke cannot take another step. He has sacrificed a lot for blood, but Itachi has soothed the inferno raging in his bloodstream, and Sakura, who it has almost always been his basest instinct to protect, has tried to make amends for an act she could not follow through with.

He's had to deal with hostage situations many times before, is almost a pro at it. Sakura is not a hostage being used to gain leverage over him, but more than any of the damsels he's had to save, Sasuke knows that he cannot let her die.

Not _Sakura._

"_Kill the Elders and come home._"

Sasuke lashes out at the nearest tree with a screech of chidori up his arm. The whole thing shudders and splinters, sways and hits the earth with a terrible thump. He screams, a little, at the unfairness of it all.

Then he turns on his heel and _runs. _


	3. ghost

**title: burns like a thousand stars**

**author: The Scarlett Ribbon**

**prompt: ghost**

**rating: K**

**summary: theirs is a story that hasn't finished yet. Sasuke, Sakura and life during the war.**

* * *

_burns like a thousand stars_

* * *

She is there through all the hours of the night, a silent guardian with blood crusted under her fingernails. The battlefield is silent now, save for the tread of shinobi retrieving the dead and dying from the depths of mud and blood somewhere out in the hushed dark. It is dark between the canvas walls, too, but Sakura cannot bring herself to close her eyes.

It has been a long, long day and she is too tired for sleep – too tired for anything now, even for questions. Or rather, she is too tired to try and seek out the answers.

Looking down at the boy in the bed – pale skin, dark hair, slender hands – all she can do is smile faintly because after all this time, Sasuke is _here. _

He is older, taller than the boy from her memories; more battered, more broken, but –

"_Sakura_," he rasps between dry lips, eyes barely open and her heart jumps, then stutters because _he's awake. _

"I'm here," she whispers, feeling the itch of dried blood in her hair and on her skin and nothing else matters because Sasuke _saved _her, Sasuke is calling her and this is more than she ever believed she would have again. But even now, she does not wish to be presumptuous. Where once she would have held his hand gently in both of hers, now she sits motionless by his beside. "I'm here, Sasuke."

She doesn't know why he changed his mind, or how the red-insanity of his eyes last time they met has disappeared. There's a vague suspicion in her mind that the change between now and the Land of Iron has to do with more than Naruto's faith and conviction and bright pull-you-out-of-the-darkness-words, which you could reach out and grab onto as though they were trailing ribbons; a lifeline to cling to and arrive somewhere other than where you are.

She doesn't know why he took the attack that was meant for her, either. It's something she will always wonder, but probably never find the courage to ask.

Sasuke watches her with dark eyes, slightly glazed with sleep and the pain of his numerous injuries. She wonders if he is even really coherent; Naruto woke up earlier babbling about ramen and Konoha and toad-sages that owed him money. The blond is back under now, and Sakura hopes that next time he wakes, he'll be her bouncing golden boy again – the brother that never was. She looks at Sasuke's pale, bloodless face and remembers how it felt to be wrist deep in his internal organs, how the pulse of his slowing heart made his ribcage reverberate against her skin.

"I won't leave you," she says, but all she can think is that this – this is the first time since that moonlit night, oh-so-many years ago, that they have crossed paths without wearing false intentions on their sleeves. In the Sound base, she was confronted with the Avenger; Sakura went to the Land of Iron, not as herself, but as a kunoichi of the Leaf.

This is something new, she thinks. This is Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun at the end of everything.

_Don't go away again, _her heart tells him in the silence and the long, lingering look between them. It is traitorous, but so true and she cannot make herself regret it anymore.

Sasuke's hand moves – skitters lightly across the bed sheet until his fingers are outstretched towards her. Just a little, but it is enough. When she reaches out to him – and she's been wanting, trying to do this, to bridge the gap between them for so long – he intertwines her fingers with his, and she can feel the bones in his hand, such fragile, breakable things beneath his paper-thin skin. There is a sob building in her throat, her chest.

"…don't," he murmurs, eyelids fluttering closed, despite himself. Sakura smiles weakly, and inhales, trying hard to stop the flow of tears building behind her eyes. Crying is a weakness that only surfaces for him.

"I'm sorry..."

Sasuke's eyes do not open, but his hand tightens around her own for the smallest moment. He needs to sleep again, she knows; it's sucking him back down into its depths and he is powerless against it. She can feel the effort it takes him to raise their linked hands to her face, her lips. The kiss she presses gently against his knuckles is a homecoming long overdue. It is _I missed you _and _don't ever leave me again, _and _thank you _and _I still love you, Sasuke-kun _all wrapped up into one.

Questions and answers aren't important anymore, not right now, in this moment that she's forever imagined and always dreamed since that morning she woke on a cold, stone bench, tear tracks salt-dry on her cheeks.

"Thank you," Sasuke says in a voice that is only slightly more than a whisper, and it is a circle finally closing. He's always held her heart in his hands, but he is aware of it now, is being gentle with the bruised organ that he unintentionally carried with him through all the dark places he's been . The ghost of him has haunted her for so long.

The tears spill over and down her face, pooling in the non-existent space between their interlaced fingers and her cheekbones. She can't be sure, but Sakura thinks his mouth softens slightly in something too tentative to be a smile.

"Always," she tells him, and that is all that needs to be said, for now.


End file.
